Wireless portable telephone handsets and in particular cellular telephone handsets tends to be very small size. Consequently, the distance between the speaker which a user commonly applies to one ear and the microphone can be less than 10 centimeters placing the microphone next to the user's cheek rather than the mouth. The microphone picks up only part of the sound waves emitted by the user forcing the latter to speak rather loudly to the detriment of privacy and the annoyance of surrounding persons. Because of the distance between the user's mouth and the microphone, the latter must be rather sensitive and yet cannot be unidirectional. Accordingly, the microphone tends to pick up a great deal of ambient noise.
The prior art has provided various types of muffling structures that can be attached to the mouthpiece of a telephone handset. U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,062 Vanmoor discloses a number of such handset attachments that do not take into account the reduced distance between the microphone and the earpiece speaker and, therefore, are not particularly useful in connection with the miniature handset so popular nowadays.
The instant invention results from attempts to overcome the disadvantages of the devices of the prior art.